Sherlock's Serenade
by sivvussa
Summary: One Shot. Sherlock's struggle to write music for John and Mary's wedding, despite the (generally uninvited) insights of his friends. With added snide comments from John because... it's John. J/M COMPLETE


Sherlock's Serenade

It really was most accommodating of John, Sherlock thought, to fall in love with someone so intellectually stimulating.

Not that Sherlock thought for a second that it was a quality that the good doctor was aware of. It was entirely possible that he hadn't noticed. John could be quite obtuse, especially around things he claimed to love. And as for stimulation, Sherlock had it on good authority that John could be stimulated by a Gregg's pasty.

It was all a matter of perspective. John understood love (he used the word liberally, embracing the world from Miss Morstan to Miss Marple); Sherlock understood stimulation (he used the word _correctly_ ).

It stood to reason that John's future wife should possess both qualities. She was also, apparently, very good at knitting.

Sherlock chewed his lip, corrected himself, chewed the end of his pencil, corrected himself, and finally applied a new nicotine patch to his already-crowded arm. It was only when the fixation began to fade that he realised he had bitten through the pencil eraser. Out of the thirteen possible compounds used in industrial stationary design only two had any negative effects, and those were mild narcotics from the glue. You would have to consume pounds of pencils to feel any effect, unless you were hypersensitive. Sherlock knew he was not that fortunate, and so he spat out the rubber onto the floor and spun the pencil between his fingers.

Now then. The woman was stimulating and... lovely? Lovable? What was the correct word? He would ask John, but the man's face really did become insufferable. The point was, she was dualistic. Sherlock rubbed out a few chords and replaced them with a simpler two-part harmony.

Music was far more logical than most people realised. Mrs. Hudson had gaped at him (she needed a new crown on her second molar) when she first heard him play. Sherlock did not understand her surprise.

"Sheeeer-lock!" she had drawn out his name in that seagull-like manner that usually meant that she was happy. "I just never expected _you_ to make something so beautiful!"

"Beauty is simply symmetry and form." He pointed out. "Most people would find murder victims beautiful if the blood fell in an aesthetically pleasing shape."

"Yes, all that spurting is just because they want to be awkward." John chipped in, peering over the edge of his paper. "You should see the Tate on a Friday night."

"Oh, I don't know anything about that," The woman cut in smoothly, missing John's gibe completely. "But I know what I like, and I liked that. It was very pretty, dear,"

"Pretty?" Sherlock echoed after her. John sniffed.

"Yes, Sherlock. _Pretty_. Go on - What kind of murder victim would that be, then?"

"Presumably one I have yet to encounter." The man returned absently, and sipped at the tea Mrs. Hudson had brought up. "John, call her back. She put sugar in my tea."

"Be grateful it wasn't salt." John carried on reading for a moment, and then, summoned by a series of pointed throat clearings, picked up his untouched mug and swapped it for his flatmate's. "There." He growled, "Mystery solved."

That had been years ago. Now, in between finding buts of rubber between his teeth, Sherlock peered at his score and thought about form, symmetry and the stimulating Miss Morstan.

Once, as an academic exercise, he had composed pieces for the people he encountered most often. Lestrade had found out and spent a morning laughing about it at the station, before finding out that his own music was a single line of childishly banal, tuneless notes. It was exactly six bars long, and the last two tailed off as if even the music couldn't finish a coherent thought.

Apparently some of the best constables still hummed it in the corridors when they saw him coming.

This piece was a far greater challenge. Molly had assured him that it needed to be a waltz, and the diatonic harmony meant that the melody had to be perfect. He had searched his mind palace for Mozart and Bach, but their strict classical form seemed utterly incorrect. Not that they weren't beautiful (he wasn't convinced about _pretty),_ but they did not fit the woman.

Sherlock hooked his skull through the eye socket with the end of the pencil and wondered if the odd, hollow noise the graphite made as it scratched bone was _pretty._ It seemed more appropriate. It _fit._ Somehow, he felt that John might disapprove of him taking the skull to the wedding, though. (A farcical objection when the room would be full of skulls wearing elaborate hairstyles, but there it was.)

Skulls! He threw his hands up in frustration and heard both the skull and pencil discover new acoustic delights as they went crashing into the wall. Skulls! It was hopeless.

"Well, of course." He heard the drawling voice in his head, and one hand clenched into a fist. Even in his own thoughts, Mycroft was a gloating arse. "You're not writing with _logic,_ baby brother. You're thinking about losing your little pet. And how long _did_ it take you to master that violin? _Weeks?"_

The detective scowled and scrubbed at his face with one hand. Banishing Mycroft in real life was much more difficult, When he was just a sneering voice in Sherlock's head he could be dismissed as the result of too much cheese.

And besides, the voice was wrong. This wasn't about John! John wasn't a problem at all, in his simpe and blunt British way. John was Purcell and Tallis and Vaughan-Williams: Simple songs made richer by centuries of tradition, harmonies built in the very bedrock of the country but common enough that people could hum them in the shower. It was _Mary_ who...

Sherlock stopped himself with a jolt and stared at the score. There it was: triple time, duple harmony and a single title: Waltz for Mary. In impetuous haste, the man leaned forward and made one correction. He stood back, folded his arms, and a smile lit his thin face.

 _Waltz for John and Mary_

It fit.

A man of simple songs, and a woman with a deeper story to tell. A lilting line of melody, and the odd chromatic harmonies which made it infinitely richer. A gentle, graceful waltz which held both John and Mary together, and it flowed from his pencil onto the page as easily as if he had known it all his life.

Sherlock finished.

He didn't know if it was pretty.

But he knew for a fact that it was beautiful.


End file.
